The following discussion sets forth the inventors' own knowledge of certain technologies and/or problems associated therewith. Accordingly, this discussion is not an admission of prior art, and it is not an admission of the knowledge available to a person of ordinary skill in the art.
Enterprises, such as corporations, universities, government organizations, and other organizations often have need to develop internal networks which provide employees access to proprietary data. Such networks typically require heightened security and policies to protect the proprietary data from theft or unauthorized access. On a small scale, such networks may be set up as Local Area Networks (LANs). Corporate LANs may include security devices, such as firewalls, for establishing a separation between the local network components and external components. These private networks are often referred to as enterprise networks.
Historically, enterprise networks have primarily been implemented using wired connections. Such designs have been suitable because, until recently, most network users accessed network resources through desktop terminals with dedicated wired connections. More recently, with the emergence of WiFi networks, users have accessed the network via a laptop or other portable device via a WiFi Wireless Access Point (WAP). The WiFi WAPs have generally been connected to other components of the enterprise network via wired connections.
One drawback of using WiFi WAPs in enterprise networks is that there is no correlation between WiFi and Public mobile network and mobile device used in the enterprise WiFi environment is generally used as a “tablet” with WiFi data connectivity only, but the mobile devices typically lose any cell phone functionality.
With evolution of communications toward mobile communications technologies such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies, many enterprises are looking to incorporate wireless mobile infrastructure in enterprise networks. LTE networks are typically deployed in various layers. For example, a Macro Layer cell may provide several miles of coverage and may provide access to several thousand users per cell. Micro or Pico Layer cells may provide localized coverage for both outdoor and/or indoor environments and my handle several hundred users per micro cell. Femto Layer cells are generally used for indoor coverage and may handle several dozen users per femto cell. There are several benefits to using mobile communications technologies, including scalability, mobility from cell to cell, and the ability to enforce QoS policies and other security and network performance policies. Thus, LTE is one example of a wireless communication technology that supports overlapping heterogeneous networks/cells.
Unfortunately, there are also some drawbacks to use of mobile communications technologies in enterprise networks. Mobile devices in fact don't belong to the enterprise but the Service Provider network. Actual subscriber policies, network security and data routing are not under control, of the enterprise administration. A further difficulty is providing access to a mobile device to both the enterprise network and the external network without specially modifying the mobile device to handle access to both networks.